


What Love Is

by iceprinceofbelair



Series: subtleties [2]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Arguing, Crying, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-16
Updated: 2017-07-16
Packaged: 2018-12-03 03:35:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11523714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iceprinceofbelair/pseuds/iceprinceofbelair
Summary: Viktor has a fight with his mother and goes to Yakov.





	What Love Is

Viktor fights with his mother when he’s nineteen.

It didn’t even start out as a fight. She’d been in a foul mood all day and it had all come to a head when Viktor had gotten upset over something his father had said on his way out the door and announced that he was going to bed.

“Alright,” she’d huffed, body language making it clear that this was not all right with her at all.

“What?” Viktor shot back, attitude rising with the hurt in his chest. He didn’t understand why she was upset with him. She never explained anything.

She sighed harshly. “Nothing, just go.”

Something in him has had enough. He refuses. It’s a bad idea and Yakov will tell him so when he shows up at his coach’s flat at 11pm in floods of tears without so much as a toothbrush.

“No, what is it,” he insists and if looks could kill he’d probably be dead.

His mother tells him that he’s been rude and disrespectful to her all day and when he tries to counter with all the ways she’s been doing the same, she just says, “I’m your mother.”

Viktor chokes. “Oh, are we doing this now?” He spits.

“Doing what?” She huffs back.

“We can’t just be two adults having a conversation. It always has to come back to you having authority, doesn’t it?”

He knows he shouldn’t have said it but he doesn’t take it back. He’s going to say what he thinks and he doesn’t care if he hurts her. She’s been hurting him, undermining him, depriving him his entire life. He’s never been allowed to feel in front of her so it’s no wonder his therapy sessions focus mostly on helping him accept that it’s  _ okay  _ to have negative emotions and it’s  _ okay  _ to cry when he’s upset. 

He employs that strategy when she starts snapping at him and releases just a little tension in his chest by letting the tears spill over. But once he starts he can’t stop.

“Oh stop it,” his mother snaps and his chest is aching. He’ll never be good enough for her. He can’t be perfect because perfect sons don’t cry, they don’t feel anything but happy. And he can’t because he hasn’t been happy in this house in a very long time.

“Stop what? I can’t help it!” He says, keeping his voice as low as he can but he finds that his throat wants to shout to make himself heard through the tears.

But still she says, “Don’t shout at me,” and  _ that  _ makes him want to shout because he’s trying but trying is never enough where his mother is concerned.

He’s reminded of how he tried to make her feel better earlier when she’d been feeling depressed. He wonders why he ever bothers when he seems to be doing everything wrong.

“Sometimes I think back over your life and wonder where I went wrong,” she says and that hits home.

He leaves and he doesn’t come back.

Viktor’s head is spinning as he wanders Saint Petersburg with tears streaming down his cheeks. He ignores his mother’s phone calls. His heart is hammering. He starts to run. He sprints until he practically collapses on the pavement and he sits there with his back against a neatly paved garden wall, sobbing silently into his knees.

He’ll never be good enough. Not ever.

He wants to tell her that she’s a hypocrite because she can “take that tone” with him but if he ever speaks to her with anything but apologies and perfect understanding of her flaws then he’s being disrespectful. She can demand respect as his mother without ever earning it. She takes his words and twists them - hears him say “you’re hurting me” and says “well you clearly think I can’t do anything right” and it kills him inside to keep trying to please her and never getting anywhere.

It’s never enough. Everything he does is wrong because of his  _ attitude  _ or his  _ tone  _ but Viktor secretly thinks it’s because he’s the one doing them. Maybe she just doesn’t love him even though she says she does because Viktor has never been in love but he’s read about it and he’s heard Georgi talk and he understands love to mean wanting to make someone else happy. He understands love to mean a willingness to change and become a better person so that you never hurt the people you love. He understands love to mean learning from past mistakes, listening, apologising. 

But his mother’s apologies seem hollow because he’s heard them time and again and seen absolutely zero change in the way she treats him.

And he thinks that it would be nice to move across the world and pretend to be somebody else so he’d never have to speak to his parents again. A fresh start sounds like what he needs. 

When he shows up on Yakov’s doorstep that night, there is no snark. Yakov doesn’t berate him or scoff at him or say anything at all, actually. Yakov wraps a blanket round his shoulders and settles him on the couch and makes some hot chocolate and listens as he cries.

After he’s fallen into a pattern of sniffles and sips, Yakov finally says, “I’ve had a lot of students who fight with their parents. They come to me with stories about how  _ this  _ went wrong or  _ that  _ wasn’t fair. Sometimes I want to slap them round the head and tell them how lucky they have it.”

Viktor nearly starts crying all over again. He should have known better than to trust Yakov. But still it stings a little that Yakov thinks it’s just teenage angst but maybe it is and maybe Viktor is overreacting and he’s being an ungrateful brat and maybe-

“But,” Yakov goes on, running a hand over his face. “Vitya, I think you should see your therapist more often. I think you need to talk about this. And I think you need some time away. We’ll go pick up your things tomorrow.”

Viktor stares. “Yakov?”

Yakov grunts and he looks much older than Viktor has ever seen him but at least his gruffness is returning. “You’ll stay here until we can find you an apartment. It’s about time you started living on your own anyway.”

That night, Viktor cries himself to sleep but it’s okay because he knows that Yakov believes him when he tells him how painful it is. It’s okay.

(Years later, when Viktor falls in love, he realises that it’s a lot more complicated than he thought. In some ways he was right - it is about making someone happy. But sometimes you mess up and that’s also okay and he understands that his parents aren’t perfect. But he also understands now that love is full of apologies - real apologies. Love, true love, isn’t about being perfect; it’s just about admitting when you fuck up. And Viktor swears he always will.)


End file.
